Literary Analysis of Little Red Riding Hood - Essay Sample

Throughout the literature, authors employ various techniques to address the thematic issues being depicted to the audience. In the story Little Red Riding Hood, Charles Perrault introduces the concept being wary to strangers to his audience. Notably, the tale beings with the little girl acquiring the instructions from the mother to take some food to her sick grandmother. Shortly after setting her feet towards her grandmothers place, she meets the wolf, whom she later has a conversation with about the ailing mother. The Wolf, being a cunning and malicious animal goes ahead of her to eat the grandmother and ultimately wait for the Little Red Riding Hood. She is also fed by the wolf upon her arrival at the grandmothers place.

From a broader point of view, the story of Red Riding Hood offers an illustration for children the dangers associated with strangers in the world. Specifically, these include the threats posed by mature males to young children within the society. The author has expressed the innocence and vulnerability of the Little Red Riding Hood symbolically through her name, Little. The author has further used Red to depict the blood or the possibility of violence. In the story, the author describes the grandmother as ailing and feeble. Through the description of this female character in the manner of weakness, the author subconsciously implies the faintness and vulnerability of female people within the society by the ideas, beliefs, and practices of a given period. Throughout the plotline, the grandmother becomes vulnerable and naive because of the expression of her susceptibility to the wolf the moment she tells him that she is too weak to get out of bed. Undeniably, this is one of the principal ways through which the audience can get to know about the helplessness of the females to the more superior male wolf.

Charles Perraults application of the chronological order in his plot portrayal enables him to address various issues to his audience adequately. In the Little Red Riding Hood, Perrault uses the storys version to teach young girls, particularly the alluring young ladies, to refrain from engaging the strangers. In his article, Jack Zipes mentions that characters, settings, and motifs are combined and varied according to specific functions with the aim of inducing a given meaning and interpretations of particular idea or object (Zipes 5). Charles Perrault cautions young girls that if they are not weary of strangers, they may become the unsuspecting prey of the seemingly polite kind of individuals such as the wolf in the storys case.

The author has further used the wolf to stand for the masculinity and mans identity and responsibility in the society. In the plotline, the wolf is guilty of giving his sinful desires to eat the girl when he first sees her. However much he refrained from giving into his wants based on the fact that he was afraid of the wrath of the people around, he went on to eat the grandmother and finally the young girl as he could not control and ignore his desires anymore. The wolf in the tale depicts fundamental characteristics of masculinity and the society where every critical thing are in the hands of the male people, who rely on their aggression and desires to obtain what they want. Throughout the tale, the author depicts males as people who have the upper hand in most situations and how girls were looked down upon.